Baruch Porras Hernandez has organized live spoken word and storytelling shows all over San Francisco for the past 7 years. He is a regular KQED Arts host and curator. He’s the Voice of Shipwreck SF Erotic Fan Fiction Competition, In San Francisco he’s won Literary Death Match, WriteClub SF, has won the Moth in LA and represented San Francisco in The Moth LA Championship. He’s the founder of ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? A Latinx Literary Performance Series which was created in part by the REGEN Artist grant from Galería de la Raza. His solo play currently titled ¡Agárrate! is being developed for production by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission for Individual Theatre Artists. He was a Lambda Literary Poetry Fellow in 2014, and will be a Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow in 2016. His poetry can be found in several anthologies, he’s featured in shows in Washington D.C., L.A., NYC, Montreal, Canada, all over California, and is the head organizer for The San Francisco Queer Open Mic. Read his work online at The Tusk, and with Drunk in a Midnight Choir. To find out more, go to baruchporrasherandez.wordpress.com.​Justin Tanis is the managing director for the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion and an adjunct faculty member at Pacific School of Religion. An artist and photographer, Justin has had a lifelong passion for the arts. He is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Theological Union, focusing on the spirituality expressed by LGBTQ visual artists. He is also the author of Transgendered: Ministry, Theology, and Communities of Faith (2003) and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He has contributed chapters to the Queer Bible Commentary and Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible.

Andrew Ramer is the author of the newly released Torah Told Different: Stories for a Pan/Poly/Post-Denominational World, along with Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories, and Two Flutes Playing: A Spiritual Journeybook for Gay Men, for which Mark wrote the Foreword. He also interviewed Andrew in his book Gay Soul, in a chapter titled “Tribal Wisdom.”

Will Roscoe, PhD is the author of The Zuni Man-Woman, Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book, Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder by Harry Hay, Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love. He met Mark Thompson in 1979 at the original Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies and was friends ever after.

Rick May writes gay short stories and organizes Queer book readings, an annual literary festival, and an online book club reading the work of authors lost to AIDS. His writing has appeared in his collections Ginger Snaps: Photos & Stories of Queer Redheads and the forthcoming Inhuman Beings, his Kindle series Gay All Year, and literary journals and anthologies. He is a deist, with beliefs built from personal spiritual experiences, Christianity, Judaism, Zen Buddhism, and philosophies of several kinds.

One of a rare breed, native San Franciscan Ken White finished Philosophy at Cal, and found himself in The Castro. A Different Light Bookstore was his first fulltime job; soon he became assistant manager/book buyer under the store’s illustrious Richard LaBonté. After a stint in the high-power world of Harper SF, he returned to bookstore managing, helming San Francisco State University’s general books until it was taken over by a large corporation, then taking on Books Inc’s location at Market and Noe. He began Query Books with a Kickstarter campaign, to bring lost or forgotten LGBT volumes back into print.

Trebor Healey’s latest book of short stories, Eros & Dust was just released. He is the recipient of a Lambda Literary award, two Publishing Triangle awards and a Violet Quill award. He is the author of three novels (A Horse Named Sorrow, Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors) a book of poetry (Sweet Son of Pan) and a previous collection of stories (A Perfect Scar & Other Stories). He co-edited (with Marci Blackman) Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco and co-edited (with Amie M. Evans) Queer & Catholic. www.treborhealey.com.

Joey Cain is a community activist and independent historian specializing in Gay/Queer Men's history. He has curated exhibitions with the SF Public Library on Gay visionaries such as Harry Hay, Walt Whitman and James Broughton and is currently collaborating with the GLBT Historical Society on Queer people and 1967’s “Summer of Love”. He co-founded The Edward Carpenter Forum, an international group of enthusiasts dedicated to the rediscovery and recognition of this important early radical Gay thinker. His writings have appeared in "RFD Magazine”, "Walt Whitman Quarterly Review" and in Mark Thompson’s collection The Fire In Moonlight: Stories From the Radical Faeries.

Brendan J. Cook is an environmental advocate and writer combining identity, theory and ecology in his poems and creative nonfiction. He works as a renewable energy expert, is the curator and of the Fab Planet Summit, a conference exploring the intersection of LGBTQ identities and sustainability issues, and co-authored a guide on green building, The Power of Zero. His latest collection Inheritance explores legitimacy in queer diversity in a time of Climate Change. He lives in San Francisco.

Dr. Carol Queen co-founded the Center for Sex & Culture [www.sexandculture.org] in San Francisco. A noted cultural sexologist whose work has been widely published, she's written or edited several books, most recently lead authoring The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone. (She has worked at Good Vibrations since 1990.) For more see www.carolqueen.com or tune into her rants on Twitter: @CarolQueen

Sr. Merry Peter, SPI found her vocation through the Radical Faeries in 1987 and served as a missionary in Toronto before moving to San Francisco in 1999. Her life-long activism focuses on HIV-AIDS, queer youth, civil rights and social justice. As a divinity student, she co-founded the first LGBT Student Union at the University of Toronto and led a successful national campaign against conversion therapy in Canada. Her efforts include health services to sex workers, legal aid for LGBTQ refugees and resistance to police violence. She is a poet, writer and former sex-worker. As a minister, she fought for equal marriage in San Francisco in 2004 and regularly performs wedding ceremonies. She lives with her husband of 17 years.